Apokalupsis Eschaton
by nofatebutwhatwemake
Summary: I’ve always felt that journals are useless dumps of emotions, but if I don’t tell my story, who will? A peek into the journals of Dr. K. Brewster. KB/JC, post-J-day, pre-Salvation.
1. August 12, 2013

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything from the Terminator franchise whatsoever and I have no intention of profiting in anyway from my work making use of the characters from Terminator.**

**_AN: Some notes on _**_**timeline - I've sort of meshed together the timelines of the movies with T:SCC. I do not ignore the events of T3, but I have shifted them forward to work with the Judgement Day of T:SCC in 2011. To me, it makes more sense - Kate couldn't possibly have been a vet at 19 unless she was a supergenius (which she may very well be). Changes to the timeline to suit my purpose will be pretty obvious and hopefully no one is put off too much by those changes.**_ _**Forgive my NIN quoting, I can't help myself.**_

**Warning: Foul language ahoy! Also: blood, sex, violence, death, etc etc etc.  
**

_I've become impossible_

_Holding on to when, when everything seemed to matter more_

_The two of us, all used and beaten up_

_Watching fate as it flows down the path we have chosen_

_~We're In This Together, NIN_

_August 12, 2013_

There's something to be said about living in nuclear fallout. It's colder than the LA I remember growing up in; it's darker, too. It's been two years since the attack and the planet still hasn't recovered, but like I said: there's something to be said about living in nuclear fallout. My name is Kate. Kate Brewster. And I am twenty-eight years old. I used to be a veterinarian. I used to be engaged and I used to live in Beverly Hills. I used to be blissfully ignorant, too. In my shiny world, Terminators did not exist. I would have scoffed at the very idea of a machine designed to hunt and kill humans. In fact, I did. But they do exist and in this dirty, grey world of radioactive dust and death, the Terminators outnumber us.

In the cold silence of the night, a voice crackles over my radio. Such a silly, little thing – some twenty dollar walkie-talkie from The Source.

"Kate, Fifi needs her propofol."

I couldn't help but scoff at the nonsense code of the night. John insists upon them, even though we have yet to see a Terminator model that can effectively mimic voices. Yet.

"Then I guess you better get to the fridge," I whispered back into my radio.

There is a long silence. It's exactly what I'd expected and it is always what I fear.

I met John Connor when I was ten years old. We were at a makeshift party in some boy's house in West Hollywood. He was precisely the type of boy that my father would have hated, so he was precisely the sort of boy that my girlish affection gravitated towards. He had kissed me that night.

"Where are you?" he asked, breaking the silence and easing my heart a bit.

I knew he was out there, somewhere close. These radios don't have much range.

"Somewhere safe," I replied.

"Kate."

He was annoyed with me. He's so often annoyed, but he knows better. He knows more than anyone how difficult life has to be. But I can never tell him where I am. I can never revel in the safety and security of being close to him, being close to anyone. If he wants to find me, he will. I know he can, so I'm not sure why he's asking.

Somewhere behind me, I heard the rubble shift. I felt my heart speed up and my breathing increased. I cocked the gun in my hand, but even after all this time, I'm no expert and I know if I fumble, I'm dead. I fumbled. There was a figure, sliding over the rubble and approaching me rapidly and I was still fumbling, even though I should've been aware that his movements were too fluid to be one of them. Before I even got a chance to right the gun, John had it out of my hand.

His muddy green eyes searched my face briefly as he wordlessly put the safety back on my gun. I knew better than to speak, so I said nothing as he handed the cool, foreign weapon back to me. He motioned with his head for us to leave the area, so again, without a word, I stood up and followed him.

I'm not unlike the others – the survivors who cling to John like some sort of Messiah. John knows how to deactivate the machines and he knows how to remove the chip, among other things. He was the first person to prove that the impossible was possible, that they can be stopped. The others like that. They feel safe when John is with them. I'm not any different – I just knew him first.

John scanned the terrain when we reached the entrance to the tunnel. Skynet doesn't know to kill him yet. He hasn't done anything to draw attention to himself. Amusingly at this time, when the world is in upheaval and he has become an actual threat to them, they don't even know his name. This is the only short time that he will be safe from them. All it will take is one of them coming back in time with John Connor in its chip and all of Skynet will know. John tried to explain it to me once, the reason he hasn't made it onto their hit list yet despite having had them hunt him throughout his entire life. I still don't get it. Something about Skynet not being self-aware enough during Judgement Day to have tapped into the Terminator that was sent to kill us – well, me, more specifically.

We dropped through the hole in the ground and covered our tracks behind us and made out way down the long winding path to the actual entrance of our camp. I remembered what the Terminator who had been sent to protect me had said - that I was the spouse of John Connor. I wonder if his telling us that had changed our future. I don't really get how that works either. In any sense, I am _not_ the spouse of John Connor. I'm not even the _girlfriend_ of John Connor. I don't know that I would call us friends, even, but maybe comrades who developed trust through insane circumstances.

When he stopped at the blast door and knocked our secret knock, I glanced up at the back of his head. He keeps his hair short and close cropped. I've seen him cut it when it starts to get long. It's an almost zen-like ritual for him. It's like a rite of passage. He's smaller than one would expect for someone who's been revered and called a leader. He's slight and fast. He has to be. He has the look of someone who is ready to run at any given moment and in my mind, that gives him an advantage over the rest of us. He's well-versed in the art of escape and survival. The rest of us are still getting the hang of it.

John walked through the door but the guards stopped me from following. By the time John turned around, startled by their actions, they'd already asked me the question.

"What's the password, Kate?"

His name is Jorge and he likes to show off in front of John. I sighed loudly.

"What are you guys doing? She's with me," John asked.

His face betrayed his annoyance and yet he's the one who stresses the importance of this very practice so much.

"You never know, John. You've said so yourself."

"Orange creamsicles," I say, cutting through them, "seasoned with love and pickle juice."

It's random and pointless, but necessary.

"Sorry, Kate," Jorge offered, standing aside for me.

As I walked in and joined John again, I could feel his eyes on my face.

"I'm sorry, Kate."

He's always so apologetic for the things he can't control.

"Don't be. They could have tortured me and taken my passwords."

I meant it as a joke. We both knew that their technology wasn't advanced enough to copy human form yet. John stopped to stare at me. When I looked up, I saw that his face was far more serious than I had expected.

"No. They couldn't have copied your likeness."

I couldn't help the irony in my frown as I replied. "I know that."

John looked at me, the warmth in his eyes icing over. "But they'll be able to someday."

He left me standing there, feeling like a chided schoolgirl. He's younger than me now because of a bout of time travel when he was fifteen, and yet he makes me feel like an ignorant child more often than not. It both humbles me and makes me angry at the same time. I know what he's been through and I know about his unconventional upbringing. I also know that he is a full seven years younger than me with far less formal education. It's hard to crush the academic snob in a woman and I can never resist the last word, especially when I'm in the heat of an argument.

"If it looked like me, would you kill it?"

I heard his footsteps stop and I looked up to find him staring at me, hard.

"What?"

Pivoting on my foot to face him, I repeated the question: "If they made one that looked and sounded like me, would you kill it?"

"You can't kill a machine, Kate. But, yes, I would."

I had expected him to turn and keep walking, to leave me alone with my own childishness, but instead he remained there, watching me with his all too wise eyes.

"If they made one that looked like me, what would you do?" he asked, his voice softer than it should have been.

I knew the proper answer. I knew that I should say I'd shoot at it, destroy it, take the chip out and burn it. But, with John standing there, slim build, green eyes and close cropped hair, knowing that we had just returned from the field together; knowing the sound of his annoyed voice over the radio; knowing that if they'd made a copy of him, then he was dead – all I could think of was a ten year old boy kissing me in the coat closet of Mike Kripke's basement.

"I would probably die."

I said it before I had a chance to filter it. If I'd thought about what I was saying before I said it, I wouldn't have. The Terminator that had come to protect me had offset whatever future it was that he had come from and simultaneously planted an idea in my head that I couldn't shake. This was what I tell myself when I want to deny that I'd spoken the truth.

I expected John to be disappointed in me. I expected him to make one of his point blank comments about how I would end up dead if I kept that attitude up. But instead he just stood there, looking back at me, a little confused. I looked away from his face. At moments like this, I can see the weakness in John Connor. I can see his humanity leaking through. It's this small, steady leak that makes him such an effective leader. It's his being an effective leader that makes it impossible for me to hold him to the standards of a regular man. These were not regular times and John Connor was not a regular man.

"Kate," he started.

But I didn't want to hear it. Not with that tone in his voice. I could handle being comrades of war if he treated me like everyone else, but when he starts to leak his emotions toward me, I cannot abide by it.

"I know. Sentimentality will get me killed. They'll use it against me. I know, I know," I said as I moved to pass him. I paused in front of him and allowed myself one more glimpse into those eyes.

"Don't worry, boss. It won't happen again."

And he knows better than to say anything more. I've put up the wall and he respects that...most of the time.


	2. September 23, 2013

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything from the Terminator franchise whatsoever and I have no intention of profiting in anyway from my work making use of the characters from Terminator.**

**Warning: Foul language ahoy! Also: blood, sex, violence, death, etc etc etc.  
**

_Awake to the sound as they peel apart the skin  
They pick and they pull  
Trying to get their fingers in  
Well, they've got to kill what we found  
Well, they've got to hate what they fear  
Well, they've got to make it go away  
Well, they've got to make it disappear_

_~We're In This Together, NIN_

_September 23, 2013_

Skynet's technology was advancing more quickly than expected. A recon mission into a Skynet facility has revealed that they'd already started the development of artificial tissue. John hasn't said much about it, but I knew it was worrying him.

In late August, he had flipped mission objectives towards the offensive when the machines started to show up more around our camp. He told me then that it would only be a matter of time before his name would start showing up in their database. All it would take was one frightened prisoner from the camp to say his name and that would be it. But he also told me that it's fine for that to happen, that he's ready for it. Of course he is – he was born for it.

In the meantime, I've been studying human surgical techniques. Obviously I know the basics, but we have plenty of nurses, family doctors and med students for the basics. We need more surgeons and since the pet population among the Resistance is understandably small, John has encouraged me to learn from the surgeons we have amongst us. We have five locally, and more out there all around America, all around the world. Not many, though. I study with Dr. Edward Embry, a rather famed teacher of surgical techniques from Harvard who just happened to be in LA at the time the bombs went off, visiting his children. Two of three still live and fight within the Resistance.

Three weeks ago, John came to me just as I was readying myself for what little sleep I can get. Dressed in his military garb, his hair freshly cropped, John looked awkward standing before me. Almost like he was sixteen years old and asking me to prom.

"Kate, I'm leading a search squad."

John had a sentimental practice of habitually scanning the area for survivors whenever we'd had a mission that had gone poorly. He felt it was necessary to bring in our dead. Lately the machines have been on us like vultures on roadkill. Same damn thing, I suppose.

"What, tonight?" I asked.

There was almost nowhere that John went now without me. He stuck to me like glue, like I was the last link he had to normalcy. I might have been for all I know. People had started to talk and they'd also started clearing the way for me. I was beginning to feel isolated, detached from the group. I was beginning to have an idea of how John felt.

"Yeah, tonight."

His eyes scanned my face and softened.

"You're tired," he said with a half smile. There was a tenderness to his voice that made me feel an emotion I shouldn't have. An emotion that I tried my best to keep locked away.

"I'll go if you need me."

It was the truth. Like anyone in this camp, if John said jump, I'd ask how high. But I did have limits and I hoped that tonight he'd either call off the search, or let me off the hook.

He smiled. "I know. Stay here tonight, Kate. Get some rest."

I nodded, but something didn't feel right. As he turned to walk away, I felt something unhinge in my head. Something was wrong. It was almost as though this whole conversation was planned. I wasn't invited to this party.

"John?"

He stopped and turned back to me, eyebrows raised expectantly.

"You're just _searching_, right?"

He broke eye contact and smiled ever so slightly before turning away again. John was very good about never verbalizing the one thing you didn't want to hear.

I'd like to say that I had a hard time getting to sleep after John left, but that would have been a lie. I had been assisting in surgery all day with Dr. Embry and I was exhausted. I fell asleep with only the slightest inkling that I would not sleep through the night.

I was awoken by the sound of panic, sometime in the middle of the night. It's a distinct combination of scuffling, screaming, and pure fear. Throw someone screaming your name into the mix and it's hell's alarm clock.

"Brewster! Brewster, wake up!"

Before consciousness had returned to me, there was a rough hand on my shoulder, wrenching me from my cot.

"Brewster, we need you _now._"

As I blinked sleep from my eyes, I recognized the man before me. It was Jorge and he was covered in blood. I felt my heart freeze for a split second and then adrenaline slapped me in the face. I was moving despite the fact that I was barely aware of my own legs.

"What's happened?"

Jorge's eyes were wild. He was going into shock and that was saying a lot. The guy had seen a lot of action but I had never seen him this shaken.

"We were ambushed. They knew we were coming. I don't know how, but they knew."

Jorge was leading me to the OR and I stopped before we were close enough to see inside the window of the door.

"Jorge, whose blood is that?"

The whole time he'd been talking, I'd been assessing his body. He had a few scratches, but from what I could tell, the blood on his clothes was not his own. My question seemed to have brought Jorge's panic to a head.

"Jorge, whose blood?"

I was yelling now, unable to contain the fear that was crushing down on my heart. He stared at me blankly before forcing the words out.

"It's Connor's," he said, his face crumpling with the admission, "It's John's, Kate."

I heard nothing after those words. I pushed through the door and began washing at the sink frantically. Within seconds, I was through the next set of doors and a nurse was sliding gloves on my hands. I scanned the room, unable to find Dr. Embry amongst the medics and nurses in the room. A medic, a girl barely in her teens, held her hands fast on blood soaked guaze over the left side of John's stomach. She glanced up at me with wild, vibrant blue eyes and in them I saw recognition, followed swiftly by hope.

"Where is Dr. Embry?" I asked the nurse who was suiting me up.

She glanced at me briefly, incredulously, and then went back to her task.

"Where is he?" I repeated with emphasis.

It is difficult to maintain your calm when you've been woken to the news that the man to whom you've dedicated your very being is bleeding out on the operating table. I needed answers and I needed a skilled surgeon.

When she still didn't answer me, I pushed past her and gently removed the young medic's hand from the gauze. I lifted it tenderly only to be met by the sight of too much blood escaping his body. At best, an artery had been nicked. There was too much blood to be anything less serious. At worst? Well, I didn't want to think about worst case scenarios just then.

"WHERE IS EMBRY?" I hollered over the blatant panic in the room.

Every person in the room seemed to freeze in time, but before anyone had the chance to answer, John's hand closed around my wrist. I looked down at him, his face pale and dripping with sweat. He smiled weakly.

"Kate. Kate's here," he closed his eyes and loosened his grip, "It's fine now."

"John. John?"

But he had lapsed into unconsciousness and I was finally hit with the very real fact that John Connor could die. Right here. Right now.

"Dr. Embry is dead," the medic whispered beside me, her eyes trained on John's ever paling face. "He was on the recon team."

"Recon?"

The word came out of my mouth sharp and severe. I felt like slapping John, but it wasn't really an option. I'd have to fix him first, slap him later. The rest of her words finally hit me like a cannonball to the stomach.

"Embry is dead."

"He's been asking for you the whole way back," the girl continued.

"You," I said to her sharply, forcing her to look up at my face. She was going into shock and I needed her to have another task to focus on. "Go out there and find Jorge. Tell him he needs to find Dr. Miller and he needs to do it fast. Connor's life depends upon it."

The girl nodded and left.

I had seen this before. I had assisted with this before. I had even done the procedure once...on a cat. I had to move fast, but the emotional tie that I had to the patient was clouding my judgement and making my limbs impossibly heavy. John Connor was bleeding out. John. John Connor. A kiss in Mike Kripke's closet, a thief locked in a dog kennel, a leader of a lost race, and a man who whispered annoyances through a twenty dollar walkie talkie. And then I let go.

"Scapel," I said, my voice cracking.

The procedure had taken three hours to complete, mainly because I'd had to facilitate a blood transfer as well. John didn't make it easy with his damn AB negative blood either. The inferior mesenteric artery had been nicked, ever so slightly, but enough to have killed John had I not started the surgery when I did.

It's difficult to doctor someone you care about. It's difficult to step away from the table and tell the others of his condition. It's difficult to let other people in to see him. It's difficult to remember that you needed to care for yourself, too. So, I sent someone else to break the news. If he made it through the next twelve hours, he had a ninety percent chance of living. If he made it through the next twenty-four hours, he was in the clear. And while the little medic girl, whose steady hand and pressure had certainly helped to keep John alive, went out to tell the others the good news, I went over to the sink in the corner of the OR and began the process of washing John Connor's blood off my hands.

The nurses prepared a fresh bed for John, but I forced them to keep it in the OR. I didn't want to risk moving him. I didn't want to lose any time if I needed to open him up once more. It seemed that Dr. Miller, the next best thing to Dr. Embry, was out on a search mission. An _actual_ search mission. It was taking Jorge's team a while to find him. When I was relatively clean, my operating gown removed and the blood had been cleaned from the table and floor, I released the nurses. I wouldn't sleep tonight and I certainly wouldn't leave John's side. Look at what happened when I did.

I watched the rise and fall of his chest with the scrupulous eyes of a doctor – his breath was even, the colour had returned to his face, and there was a negligible amount of blood seeping through the guaze on his side. I knew that he would, in all medical probability, pull through, but there was a person who worried far more irrationally than the doctor within me. It was the woman who had fallen in love with John Connor, although she'd never admit it. And she watched each breath he took, noting any tiny change in normalcy with the most paranoid observation.

I reached out to touch his face. The nurses had done a very good job of sponging him clean and with his returning colour; one would have thought he was merely sleeping rather than unconscious due to trauma. In the empty operating room, I took his hand and released a long breath. I leaned forward, knowing that I was safe to do this now. I had no reason to avert my eyes from the kindness of his face, no reason to give in to my cowardice. Only it was cowardly of me to do this now, when he wouldn't remember. He wouldn't even know that I'd pressed my lips to his forehead and whispered in his ear.

"I love you, John Connor."


	3. October 5, 2013

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything from the Terminator franchise whatsoever and I have no intention of profiting in anyway from my work making use of the characters from Terminator.**

**Warning: Foul language ahoy! Also: blood, sex, violence, death, etc etc etc.**

**AN:_ I suppose it's in this chapter that I muck about with the events of T3. I shifted things forward and changed circumstances...because I can._  
**

_The farther I fall, I'm beside you  
As lost as I get, I will find you  
The deeper the wound, I'm inside you_

_Forever and ever I'm a part of you_

_~We're In This Together, NIN_

_October 5, 2013_

I remember, with great clarity, the second time John Connor crossed my life's path. It was four years ago, I had just finished veterinary college and I was engaged to Scott. My life, for all intents and purposes, was on the right track. And then there was John Connor.

I'd always called it coincidence that I'd been called in for a medical emergency the same night a seventeen-year old John Connor broke into the clinic to steal supplies. A purely chance meeting. Not to mention that when he'd said his name was John Connor, I didn't immediately put the pieces together. The John Connor who'd kissed me in Mike Kripke's basement should have been the same age as me. But he wasn't and things had only gotten stranger therein out.

Before I knew it, my world was flipped upside down – Scott was dead, killer robots were after me, and a reprogrammed T-800 was raving about a resistance and marriage. In the end, Skynet was launched with a low level AI system on June 15, 2009. John and I had tried to explain what was happening to my father who had then deemed it intelligent to call the police. He'd dug up John's file and found the following: the son of a single mother, who had spent time in a mental hospital, trespassing, shoplifting, disturbing the peace, vandalism, and the murder of Miles Dyson, all by the age of ten. After that, he'd fallen off the grid, and as I was to learn, at fifteen he'd disappeared from existence as I knew it.

The real problem was that I believed John. I'd seen the machines after us; I'd seen what they could do. John had spoken with such conviction about Judgement Day and Skynet that I felt I had no choice but to believe him. So I ran with him. For two years we monitored Skynet's AI until on May 3, 2011, almost a full month after the date that John had believed would be J-Day, Skynet resisted our hacking attempt. It was then that we sought out my father once again to find the core of Skynet, and it was that day that he sent us to Crystal Peak – to the fallout shelter. There, while the world blew up around us, we made contact with military personnel and thus the resistance was formed.

The operation that John had been participating in the night his artery was nicked was entitled Operation: TechCom. I've been told, or rather I've overheard, that John Connor had been assigned a special operations team to intercept, hack, redistribute and otherwise sabotage communications between Skynet and its operatives. This unfortunately meant that the TechCom team would often have to delve out of the comfort of late night, high-cover survivor searches and into the realm of hunting Terminator models, drawing out HKs and setting up camp in hot spots. It's no wonder John didn't want to tell me about the operation – I would have protested his reckless shoot-first-ask-questions-later approach to TechCom's first mission. And judging by the results, I would have been right to do so.

John was bed-ridden for a week following the surgery and had restricted movement in general once he was out of bed for at least a second week, if not a third. From the moment Dr. Miller arrived back to camp and I woke to find John and him speaking in hushed tones, my hand locked tightly on John's, I had made myself scarce. I was being praised throughout the camp as having saved John Connor's life, but the praise rang hollow as I allowed myself to feel that forbidden emotion I'd locked up after Scott was killed. How could I have fallen in love with John Connor? How could I have let it happen? And when had it happened, anyway? My immediate response was to avoid John like the plague, but Dr. Miller had other plans. He was leaving our camp permanently stating that I was clearly a competent surgeon and he needed to be with those camps less fortunate than ours - those which lacked a surgeon.

Had this happened with Embry alive, I would have found myself shipped out of the camp alongside Miller. But Embry was dead and John had insisted that I stay in the camp. Essentially, John had encouraged Miller to leave. Again, I'd been overwhelmed with the desire to both revel in the glory of being a favourite to John and also with the intense desire to shake John in his sick bed and tell him what an idiot he was. And so it was that I was forced to see John on a daily basis, to interact with him, and to bite my tongue.

The first time that I came to check on the incision site after Miller had left, John was finally able to function easily in a sitting position. When I came through the door, the smile on his face made my heart pound uncomfortably in my chest. I'd had to avert my eyes from his. His team members left the room so that I could examine him.

"Kate."

I knew he wanted to have a conversation, but I didn't.

"Stand up and lift up your shirt."

"Nice to see you, too."

I ignored his hurt tone and focussed on gently removing the bandaging around his side. The wound was an angry red against his already scarred skin.

"How does it feel?" I asked as I knelt down to get a better look at it.

I watched his body move in a shrug. "It's fine."

After I cleaned the area, I covered it with a fresh piece of guaze. I stood up slowly, still keeping my eyes away from John's face. He dropped his shirt. I could feel his glare on me so I forced myself to look at his face. I drew in a long breath before speaking.

"It's healing well and I see you're up and about. It shouldn't be long now before you're back in the field."

I didn't like the sound of my voice. It betrayed the hollowness of my words. I didn't want him in the field. I didn't want the possibility of him being injured to loom over my head. I turned to leave, feeling as though there was nothing else I could say.

"I'm sorry, Kate."

There was a part of me that was screaming. Sorry? That was all he had to offer? Instead of losing it, I pivoted on my heel and tried to keep my face neutral.

"I should have told you," he said with a sigh.

Only John Connor could sound wistful about a near death experience.

"Damn right you should have."

The words had come out much sharper than I had intended and yet they echoed my exact feelings. He was so goddamn reckless. John suddenly found the floor extremely interesting. I bit my lip and poised myself to leave again. That is until those intense green eyes of his were locked on me again.

"I didn't want you to come, Kate."

"Why?"

"It was an incredibly combative and dangerous effort." He said the words as though he was reading them from a textbook – vacant repetition.

I felt my jaw set as my temper rose with his implication. "And I can't handle myself?"

An unexpected, cautious smile that seemed to hold some affectionate meaning played at his lips with his immediate answer: "You still fumble with your gun."

I squared my shoulders involuntarily. "I have excellent observation skills and steady hands," I narrowed my eyes at him, "And you _know_ I'm capable of blowing those fuckers to hell."

John smiled. "Sure, but that temper of yours could get you killed and your steady hands are much better served in an operating room."

He paused, studying my face in controlled silence. "Kate, I don't want to argue with you."

"Well, that's unfortunate, isn't it John? Because I do. How could you? I've given you four years of my life, running on faith that this reality was an actuality. John, we're a team. I don't understand how you-"

"I didn't want to put you at risk," John said, cutting me off and silencing my words.

"John, I've been at risk since I met you. We are _all_ at risk."

The steady leak of emotion I'd mentioned before burst forth as though the dam had broken completely. His face crumpled, but his eyes remained locked on mine.

"I'm glad you weren't out there."

His words infuriated the proud solider in me while simultaneously feeding my heart.

"What's that supposed to mean?" I whispered.

I knew better than to hope for what I was hoping for, but I couldn't stop myself.

"I don't want to lose you, Kate."

I knew that if I were arguing with John Connor the Resistance leader, I could have told him that we were all lost; that the only way to survive was to stay cohesive in our team, stay together as a unit. But I knew that I was not arguing with the solider here; I was arguing with the man. I was torn in my response, so I let my body do the talking – I turned to leave again.

John would have none of that.

"I heard you," he called behind me, his voice more desperate than I ever wanted to hear it.

"You heard me what?" I asked without turning around.

There were tears threatening at the corners of my eyes and I didn't want to share that weakness with him.

"I heard what you said to me after the surgery."

My entire body seized with horrible tension. There was enough madness around here without dragging whispered words of love into the equation. Where in this world of continual death and ugly survival was there room for love? It took every ounce of effort in my body, but I forced the words out:

"I don't know what you think you heard, John, but it was probably a side effect of blood loss."

My hand pushed hard against the door in front of me and I was out of the room before he had a chance to continue. Although I thought I heard him say: "I love you, too."


	4. October 15, 2013

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything from the Terminator franchise whatsoever and I have no intention of profiting in anyway from my work making use of the characters from Terminator.**

**Warning: Foul language ahoy! Also: blood, sex, violence, death, etc etc etc.  
**

_You and me  
We're in this together now  
None of them can stop us now  
We will make it through somehow_

_~ We're In This Together, NIN_

_October 15, 2013_

There's this thing about survival – you stick with what you know. Meaning that we all clump together, solidarity in numbers, camaraderie in being alive, and that means very little alone time. As a 'doctor' - I use the term loosely given that I was a veterinarian before J-day – I have even less alone time. If it isn't some child with a sniffle, it's some solider with a wound to be stitched. And those are the good days.

We had a room in camp, a little corner of a room, in which we store medical documents. It wasn't as secure as we were used to before our world was blown to hell, but it would do. Our notes weren't as extensive as before either, so that made the little corner just right for storage. I usually would leave my filing for someone else to do when I was out in the field, but lately John was so absorbed in TechCom that survivor searches had practically been called off. There was also some talk of our location being even less than secure as of late, probably because of the trail of blood John and others had undoubtedly left behind, so no one was going out unnecessarily. So, filing was the only thing I had to keep me sane – my only alone time.

It had been days since John had been cleared to return to his regular activity and therefore there was no reason for us to interact beyond brief nods of the head in the hall. It was driving me crazy. The little corner filing room served two purposes: keeping me busy and keeping me away from John. There was this look in his eyes when we passed each other. It was something that looked halfway between pissed off and longing. I didn't like it because in either case it wouldn't be good for me.

It was on a day where I felt particularly alone, without John nor anyone else interacting with me – a direct by-product of being the person to have saved John Connor's life – that I gathered up the stack of papers I had acquired over the past few weeks and headed over to the little corner filing room.

I turned out of the makeshift office we had and like a high school romantic comedy, just when I wasn't looking, who did I walk right into? That's right, John Connor. Papers flew, eyes met, dramatic music played in the background. Alright, not quite. Basically my papers slid awkwardly down my front, which I managed to catch by myself and John stared at me like I wasn't right in the head.

"Sorry," I muttered as I gathered up my papers.

"Do you need help?"

I rolled my eyes. "You mean mentally?"

John smiled easily and I have to say that I was quite drawn in by it. He so rarely smiled lately.

"Well, that goes without saying," he said with shrug.

"Ha," I replied sarcastically, pushing past him in the hall.

I could feel his eyes on me as I walked away, which only made me walk a little faster. I didn't know how to deal with the fact that he'd heard me, or that I'd heard him for that matter. Love in this flat, grey world was almost unwelcome to me. It hurt too much to care about anyone here. You never knew who would be coming back from a mission and who wouldn't be. And I knew that it was only a matter of time before John became Skynet's number one target, if he wasn't already. It already wrenched at my heart when his team was back later than expected. How could I handle _loving_ him? Love hurts and life's a bitch. Especially now.

I started filing as soon as I was in the room, trying to drown myself in the mediocrity and familiarity of such a menial task. I hadn't been doing it for long before I heard him come in the room and close the door. I felt my heart speed up and I knew that this talk was inevitable, yet I kept filing as though he wasn't actually there. He was silent for a long time, watching me in his highly attentive manner. Just when I thought I couldn't bear it anymore, he spoke.

"How long do you plan on ignoring me?"

I huffed to myself and continued filing. "I wasn't ignoring you. I just figured that if you had something to say, you would have said it."

"I'm not talking about right now, Kate."

I faltered, losing the rhythm of my filing drone, and papers fluttered to the floor. I pinched the bridge of my nose and drew in a long breath before leaning down to pick up the papers. John was silent and frighteningly patient as I continued my little charade.

I sighed before starting again, my fingers grasping the papers shakily. "I don't know what you're talking about."

"Bullshit."

It was a mere whisper but laced with so much indignant rage that I couldn't ignore it. I turned around and glared at him only to meet his own intense stare.

"What do you want?" I whispered.

"What are you afraid of, Kate?" John's eyes were wild as he spoke.

"Is it me?" he asked, taking a deliberate step towards me.

Instinctually, I stepped backwards, my back against the filing cabinet.

"Is it this world? What are you afraid of?"

I swallowed. Right now I was distinctly afraid of John Connor. Not because I feared he would hurt me – he would never – but because he wasn't going to let me get away from this. I lifted my chin defiantly, my eyes meeting his with determination.

"I'm not afraid of anything."

John released a silent chuckle and placed his hands on the filing cabinet on either side of my head, essentially locking me in place. His eyes bored into mine, as if he hoped to find all the answers there.

"Liar."

I looked away from the intensity of his eyes, even though there was nowhere for me to run. It was a mistake because in that moment of vulnerability, John had moved his face dangerously close to my own. When I turned back, it was too late – he was close enough that I could feel his breath on my skin, sending shivers through my body. He was close enough to kiss.

He tilted his head as though he would kiss me and I closed my eyes in anticipation. However, instead of kissing me, he asked me a question, his breath dancing tantalizingly across my hypersensitive lips.

"Tell me something, Kate. Does it bother you when I go out in the field?"

My eyes snapped open and met his, a resolute frown on my face eliciting a tiny upturn of John's lips.

"Did it upset you when they brought me into your OR?"

I felt a flood of emotions wash over me, all heightened by his physical closeness. I wanted to push him away and run. I didn't want to discuss this. I focussed on the only emotion that I felt could help me in this situation: anger.

"What the fuck do you think, John? You were bleeding out all over anyone within a three foot radius."

He rested the side of his head against mine, his lips resting somewhere near my ear.

"But you didn't feel it, did you?" His breath was hot against my ear.

"What?"

This line of close and personal questioning was making me mad, both hormonally and emotionally. How could I answer questions like this when I could barely understand their meaning? How could he expect me to keep my wits when all I could smell was _John_? He pulled back again, his whole body taking on a more relaxed stance, his eyes searching my face. There was a warmth in their green depths that was both intelligent and deeply poignant. I was sure that I only looked like a confused mess.

"You were the doctor," he said.

I felt my face pinch as I tried to understand what he was getting at.

"You turned it off," he paused, his expression dangerous, "Like a machine."

His words hit me hard. "Like a machine?" I repeated, my voice shaking angrily.

John said nothing, his expression was unreadable and I felt like he was dissecting me right there, against the filing cabinet. I was angry. I was hurt. I was excited. I was aroused. It was quite possibly both the best and worst moment that I'd had in a long time.

Then John said something quite unexpected. "Prove to me that you're human, Kate."

"What?" I couldn't believe that he had just said that. To me. I was so deeply entrenched in rage and fear and indignation at his words, his implication.

"Fuck you, Connor. Why don't you cut my scalp open and look for a fucking chip?"

His face broke into an amused grin, but he didn't back off. I felt my temper rise up another notch. I pushed at his chest, hard, but he held fast.

"Let me go," I hissed.

John just shook his head lightly. His controlled expression was back in place and his eyes scanned my face with the expertise of a hardened interrogator. Hard as a rock at twenty-one.

"Not until you prove it to me. Not until you show me that you feel."

I struggled against his arms, which he had moved to actually pin me against the filing cabinet.

"I'll scream."

It was empty threat. If John Connor had felt it necessary to drag me down the hallway by my hair, they'd all assume it was for a good reason. They'd all assume that I was one of _them_. That was the power that John Connor had.

John smiled at me. "Go ahead if you think it will help."

I drew in a controlled breath and attempted to regain some direction over my wild emotions.

"What do you want me to say?"

"I don't know, Kate. What do you think you should say?"

I didn't want this. He wasn't going to give up until I gave him what he wanted, but I didn't know what he wanted.

That was a lie.

I knew what he wanted, but the cost was so high to my heart. So very high.

"Why are you doing this?" I asked, defeated.

"Why? Because you pass me in the corridor and pretend that I didn't hear you and that you didn't hear me. Because you're an empty shell, going through the motions everyday. Because I don't recognize you anymore."

I cowered from his words, keeping the tears that wanted to escape in place. I shook my head at his words, but couldn't meet his eyes.

"No?" John whispered, his face mere inches from mine. "So, tell me, Kate. Did it upset you when they brought me into your OR? Were you afraid? Did you think that I might die?"

Each question chipped away steadily at the protective bubble I'd made for myself. Every question grated on my heart.

He paused and I could feel his frustration escalating. "Kate, was there any part of you that felt _anything_ that night?"

Had I felt anything? What hadn't I felt? Fear had been dominant, but there had been other emotions. There had been the distinct pull on my heartstrings that reminded me just who my patient was – not that he was John Connor, the Resistance's one great hope for victory, but that he was just John, the boy I'd kissed when I was ten, the man I followed into the insanity of Judgement Day, my only reason to keep fighting.

"Yes! I felt it, alright?" I was screaming, crying, hitting him when he loosened his grip on me. But he didn't let me go totally. He wasn't done with me yet.

"Why?"

"Why?" I repeated incredulously through tears, "You know why."

"Say it."

I shook my head lightly, my eyes meeting his. I wanted to believe that I couldn't read the emotion in his eyes, but that was a lie again.

"Say it."

I shook my head again, inciting his anger. There was a violent storm brewing in those green eyes. He needed this confirmation as much as I needed my denial; maybe even more so. His hands closed around my upper arms and I let out a startled cry.

"Say it, Kate."

"I can't," I sobbed, "It hurts too much, John. You could die. I could lose you. I can't...I can't lose you."

He raised a hand to my face while I tried to stop my sobbing. His thumb, rough from years of battle even before the battle had begun, gently brushed the tears away from under my eyes. I watched his face in wonder. He was amazing in the way he could switch so easily between Resistance leader and simple man. His eyes caressed every curve of my face before meeting my eyes again. I was mesmerized by them, by the pain and loneliness in them, by the love that he was able to feel even after everything he'd been through.

"We could all die, Kate. Give me something to live for."

"I love y-"

But I didn't get to finish, not before John's mouth was over my own, not before our bodies were pressed together, trying so desperately to close the distance between us, not before my filing was long forgotten.


	5. November 7, 2013

**Disclaimer: I don't own anything from the Terminator franchise whatsoever and I have no intention of profiting in anyway from my work making use of the characters from Terminator.**

**Warning: Foul language ahoy! Also: blood, sex, violence, death, etc etc etc.**

**AN: Sorry for the big delay! I was in Japan.  
**

_You and me  
If the world should break in two  
Until the very end of me  
Until the very end of you_

_~We're In This Together, NIN_

_November 7, 2013_

The second time I kissed a boy was on July 23, 1999 at Oak Ridge Military Academy in North Carolina. My father had moved us three times since John Connor had made the news for the murder of Miles Dyson. Three times in four years. Imagine an adolescent girl being torn from all she knows, going through puberty minus a mother, and being the perpetual 'new girl' at school. I had a lot of teenage angst, I won't deny it. My father's solution was military camp, which he later viewed as one of the many mistakes he'd made in my upbringing. And, so, the second boy I kissed was Ethan Stevenson, a fellow ultra-rebellious student of Oak Ridge Military Academy.

Ethan was, once again, the precise sort of boy my father would have abhorred. He was a deviant, as they say, and he was serving time at the camp after his stepfather had discovered that Ethan had sold every single one of his prized first edition baseball cards on the then infantile Ebay. Ethan and I had spent a lot of time planning our escape from the camp, even going so far as to draw out elaborate escape routes on napkins in the mess hall. It wasn't until we were caught attempting one of our grand escape plans and were subsequently thrown into the brig together that matters had escalated into a kiss. A sloppy, hormonal kiss through prison bars. My father had been called in at that point and he dragged me, kicking and screaming, from the cell. He then took every possible precaution to keep me from ever contacting Ethan Stevenson again.

So imagine my surprise when six months after J-Day, John and I came across one Corporeal Ethan Stevenson hiding in the rubble of what used to be a shopping galleria. He was paranoid, terrified and shell-shocked. He almost shot us, but then came the recognition, just in time.

"Kate? Kate Brewster?"

He was covered in dust from head to toe and he hadn't shaved in god knows how long, so I probably took longer than he'd expected to recognize him.

"Who are you?" I asked.

John was at my side, his gun raised in perfect precision.

"Oak Ridge Academy, 1999. The Great Kate Escape."

Every muscle in my face relaxed in that extremely pleasing way after having been drawn into tight lines for so long; and then a smile stretched those muscles in an even more pleasing way.

"Ethan Stevenson," I said, shaking my head in disbelief.

"You know this guy?" John asked, his hand still steady on the trigger.

I turned to him without seeing him, my eyes still on Ethan, and a wide smile on my face. "Yeah, yeah. I know him."

I'd then climbed over the rubble and fell into a deep bear hug with Ethan. Seeing someone that you recognize rising from the ashes like a phoenix can lift your heart in ways you can only imagine. For the first few days, Ethan had been a welcome distraction for both John and I. Ethan behaved as a mediator, a wall for us to bounce off of before we tore each other limb from limb. John and I were a good team, but there was rarely a day where we didn't argue about something – a decision, a camp site, a direction, whatever. For a while I even fancied myself a little bit in love with Ethan, but those are the sorts of feelings that we all have whenever we find a survivor that we knew from before J-Day. It doesn't happen very often, but every time it does, you fall in love a little.

Ethan, we had learned, had gone on into a military career after all. However, his interests were more medical than military. The government had excellent benefits, or so he said. He liked to call himself a physiotherapist with a gun. John had told him that was the only kind of physiotherapist that held any worth in this world. Ethan stayed with us and helped us to build our current camp. He's one of the few people in John's inner circle, my inner circle.

It was Ethan who was with me in the field the day John Connor fell behind. We'd decided to move our camp at long last. Even though the constant swarm of Metal was precisely what TechCom required, John made the call that if we were reckless even in the slightest, we'd all end up dead. He had no intention of dying just yet.

We moved in small groups of twos and threes, travelling relatively close behind one another. The machines had us so covered here that we kept radio communication to emergency usage only. It was quiet outside the tunnels – horrifyingly silent. John had paired me with Ethan and himself with Michael Richter, the youngest member of our camp at fifteen. I think in a way, John was trying to take personal responsibility for Michael. I think that's how he fell behind, too.

Ethan and I made our way through the rubble, bones, and destroyed Metal in absolute silence. He had keen eyes and he knew exactly how to stay alive here. Part of me wondered if John had sent me with Ethan on purpose. I found his protectiveness both endearing and unnecessary, but that would have to be an argument for another day. Ethan and I had made it to camp following the first team without encountering Metal. That had been John's plan, after all. It wasn't like us to move about in daylight and after being under such constant watch by the machines, John figured that it was our best chance to move the entire camp at once. But we all knew the dangers of moving around in daylight. They had a better handle on us in the light, better visuals and better aim.

Ethan and I ushered the teams into our new bunker and stood guard at the door. Teams had begun to straggle through; these were the people who'd encountered trouble. These were the people who'd encountered Metal. John and Michael were three teams behind Ethan and I in the consecutive order of departure, and when the last group straggled in, one of the members injured badly, I began to worry about John. The radio had been silent, which meant one of three things: John was not in danger, John was fighting and unable to radio, or John was dead. I refused to acknowledge the mere existence of the third option.

It wasn't until we saw a lone figure tripping over rubble, clumsily making his way to us that my heart truly sunk. The figure was Michael and he was alone. Without thinking, I ran to meet him. He started babbling immediately, but none of it was coherent.

"Where is Connor?" I asked him sharply.

"They were...they....he said to run," he managed between ragged breaths.

"Where?"

But Michael didn't answer me, the sound of rapid fire did instead. I knew it was stupid. I knew that John would admonish the hell out of me later. But that was okay. I wanted him to because if he was screaming at me it meant that he was alive. I heard Ethan yelling after me, but I ignored him. My feet were light, like a dancer's, as I leapt over the crumbling foundations of skyscrapers, narrowly avoiding the rebar that jutted out like death waiting. It was when I made it over a particularly large hill of rubble that I saw him. He'd been knocked to the ground, but he was still firing madly. There were three of them and quite frankly I was amazed that he was still alive.

The closest machine to him landed a shot somewhere in his upper body. I sincerely hoped that it was only the shoulder, but I doubted the machine's lack of precision. I started firing my submachine gun into one of the approaching machines as my light feet lead me down the hill. I felt as though there were nothing that could stop, as though the limitations that usually sit heavily on my shoulders had been lifted – there were no limitations. The impossible was possible. There is no fate but what we make for ourselves.

John managed to down the T-500 that was right on top of him. Despite his best efforts to back away from its trajectory, it managed to fall on his leg. John let out a howl and struggled to both shoot and push the Terminator from his body. I stepped over his body just as the magazine of his handgun ran out. I fired the submachine until there were no bullets left, successfully downing the approaching T-400, but the third Terminator was a model I hadn't seen before. It was armed with a Gatling gun which it had not started firing yet. It seemed this model had some ability to assess a situation beyond simply approach and kill. I think it was assuming that the other two machines would have been successful in killing John.

I switched from the machine gun to a shot gun and barrelled shots into the approaching Terminator. The shots were barely touching the thing. I watched it raise the Gatling gun. I reloaded the shot gun and glanced back to see what progress John was making with freeing his leg only to find him staring up at me, dazed. Of all the times for him to be shell-shocked.

I fired a shot at the Terminator and screamed at John.

"John, get up!"

This seemed to knock him from his daze a little and he struggled to pull his leg from underneath the T-500. The shot I'd landed in its arm had successfully disrupted the approaching model's ability to pull the Gatling gun trigger and while this bought us a little time, it did not by any means save us. I looked back again at John. His leg was bleeding pretty heavily. I couldn't assess how much damage had been done just then – I was out of ammunition. I pulled a handgun out of the back of my pants and fired for the Terminator's head. This thing showed no sign of stopping and the gleam of a line of shiny Terminator skulls glinting in the sunlight came over the hill before us. We had to run, whether John's leg was operational or not. I turned around, leaned down and grabbed the shirt of the shell-shocked John Connor. I looked him dead in those dazed green eyes and I said:

"On your feet, soldier!"

John blinked and his eyes cleared. He saw the line of approaching Terminators behind me and he forced himself to his feet.

"I'm up, Kate. We need to get the hell out of here."

We ran, escaping gun fire from the Terminators, but I knew we couldn't do this for long. John's leg was bad – could have been broken, could have been shot, could have been a deep gash – I had no way of knowing right now. We had one chance, the way I saw it. In my pocket was a prototype electromagnetic grenade that John had been working on. They weren't, in his opinion, ready to even be tested. They were too unstable, too unpredictable. They would still produce shrapnel and an explosion, but they would emit an electromagnetic pulse that might knock the Terminators out for a few seconds. I had taken one from his pack before the camp moved out without John knowing. Unstable or not, I felt that they might come in handy in a dire situation. This was a dire situation.

I had to get John over the hill of rubble before I threw it. I needed to get both of us out of the line of shrapnel. I tried to shield John while dragging him up the hill. From the top of the hill, I could see Ethan had just made it to the bottom. I gave John a rough shove down the side of the hill and turned back around to find that the unknown Terminator model had finally caught up with us. It thrust its metallic fingers through my shoulder. I screamed, the pain was so sudden and severe. With my free hand, I pulled my hand gun up and aimed it for the eye of the Terminator.

"Die, you motherfucker!" I hissed through gritted teeth before delivering the shot.

The shot hadn't killed it, but it gave me enough time to press my free hand against its chest and pull my shoulder off of its fingers. The pain was excruciating, unlike anything I had ever experienced in my life. I know that I fell to my knees. I know that at that time, I could hear John screaming for me. I could hear gunfire. I could see bright spots dancing along my vision and I could see metallic fingers gripping the rubble at the top of the hill. I took the EM grenade out of my pocket, pulled the pin and threw it over the hill. I knew I had to run, so I did somehow.

When I made it to Ethan and John, all I could say was: "Run!"

Ethan abandoned firing at the few terminators that had made it to the top of the hill and dragged John with him. I pulled them both down behind a partial wall of crumbling cement just before the explosion went off. An electrical hum rode on the shockwave of the grenade, along with bits of metal shrapnel.

John looked at me with an expression of utter disbelief and yet all I could think was that sizes of his pupils were unequal, that he had a concussion.

"Is that what I think it was?" he asked.

"What the hell was that?" Ethan asked us both.

"Did it work?" I asked weakly.

Ethan peeked over the wall. He narrowed his eyes disbelievingly and then stood up, gun poised to fire.

"They're...none of them are moving," Ethan said slowly.

John frowned. "They'll start again. We need to get going."

John turned back to me. His eyes widened and searched my face closely – a distinct sign of concern colouring his features.

"Kate," he started.

But the world was going black by then and still the only thing I could think of was his pupils.

"You have a concussion," I mumbled as I lost consciousness.


End file.
